The Variables (24 page)

Teddy nodded against Ethan’s shoulder.

“This is stupid,” she said to no one in particular. “I didn’t want to leave him. I told my dad—” Blair looked up at Ethan. “I don’t want him to think I’m not coming back for him.” She blinked and bit back another wave of emotion. “I’m coming back.”

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but instead, she lowered her head and worked her way against the current, back through the throngs of the Kymberlin residents, her sniffles carrying down the hallway in short, meaningful bursts.

Cass clicked her tongue. “That girl,” she sighed.

“You feel sorry for her,” Lucy said.

It took a long time for Cass to reply. She gave Lucy’s hand a long squeeze and shook her head. “No, friend. Not really. I feel sorry for the child.”

Lucy heard her mother and father whispering, and Harper and Teddy jabbering in hushed tones; she could hear the steady clunk of Ethan’s prosthetic foot propelling him forward unevenly. He had yet to perfect his own movements and he jerked and bobbed, putting his metal leg, dressed in a tennis shoe, out in front and sliding his good leg up to meet it. Sometimes he dragged the prosthetic forward. The effect was always jarring and Ethan’s face was frozen in a mixture of pain and anger. The quiet march of the hallway only drew attention to the awkwardness.
 

Lucy watched Cass steal a look behind her to watch Ethan move along behind them. He had his hand flat against the wall for support, and sweat beads accumulated at his brow. Cass hesitated for a moment. She let her hand drop from Lucy’s, and made a move like she was going to go to him, but then she turned forward again and kept moving.

“We should help him,” Lucy said, pulling her bag up over her shoulder.
 

“It would embarrass him,” Cass replied. She smiled sadly. “We’ll be at the elevator soon.”

“You don’t know my brother,” Lucy said. “He’s stubborn, but he’s not prideful. I should go—”

Cass put out her hand and gave Lucy’s shoulder a supportive pat. “I don’t know, of course. But I think you might just want to give him space. He’ll come to you when he needs you and when he’s ready. Sometimes people need to process their loss before they’re ready to address it.”

Coldness swept over Lucy and she bristled at Cass’s interpretation of her brother’s feelings. Cass didn’t know Ethan the way she knew Ethan. Her new friend didn’t know what he needed. Or did she? More than anything, she didn’t want to admit that maybe Cass was right—maybe her brother needed space from her, and that realization hurt more than anything. “He lost us, too,” Lucy said, but even as the words left her mouth, she realized how selfish it made her sound.

“But he didn’t,” Cass said, and then she turned her attention away from Lucy and dropped her hand, closing the conversation.
 

Teddy walked hand-in-hand with Ethan and they trudged along together; the boy talked in short bursts and asked questions as they meandered forward. Lucy strained to listen.

“Mama Maxine says that Mama Blair made me a Star Wars room. A real Star Wars room,” Teddy told Ethan. “Is that true?”

“I don’t know, Teddy. It could be,” Ethan answered in a soft voice. He looked to Allison for confirmation, but the nanny merely shrugged. She hadn’t said a word since Blair deposited her and the bags in front of them in the hallway.
 

“I don’t want to fall into the ocean.” Teddy looked up at Ethan with wide eyes.

“Why would you fall into the ocean?” Ethan asked.

“Because Mama Blair says that our new house floats on the ocean,” Teddy stated, as if Ethan should already know this fact.

“I’m sure you won’t fall. I’m sure it’s very safe.”

Lucy looked at Cass and realized that she had been eavesdropping, too. She looked away before Cass made the connection, too. Lucy kept her eyes trained on the ground; her mind focused only on the conversation happening behind them. If they had not been part of a moving line, Lucy would have stopped and wrapped her arms around her brother’s neck and just hugged him until he told her to quit or pushed her away. She wanted to take responsibility for her part in his unhappiness. They had shared something back in Oregon: a desire to survive, a feeling of abandonment, clarity of the magnitude of Huck’s actions. They had that. They would always have that. She would not let his anger take that camaraderie away.
 

“Ethan?” Teddy asked. “Is my mommy waiting on the Islands?”

The question took Ethan by surprise. He stopped walking. He took his hand and put it squarely on Teddy’s head and brought the boy into him; his head hit Ethan’s hip. Lucy and Cass couldn’t help but stop and turn, too. The whole King family watched as Ethan grabbed Teddy and swung him upward. The child wrapped his legs around Ethan’s waist and in return, Ethan grabbed hold tightly across Teddy’s back. With great purpose, he began to stalk forward: big, heavy strides, wearing the boy against his chest.

“I’m praying that she will be, little man,” Ethan said to him. This time he said it loudly, punctuating each word. Ethan marched between Lucy and Cass, and he shot a glare in Lucy’s direction. Without looking away, he added, “No one had any right to take you away from her. She’s coming for you, Teddy. You hear me? She’s never gonna stop looking for you. Do you believe that?”

The child nodded.

“Good,” Ethan said. He started to gain ground, sliding past his sister with an air of stubborn determination. “I believe that, too.”
 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The captain warned them it would be an intense landing. He said it as a throwaway comment, with the same intonation he had used to declare the cruising altitude. Yet when he brought the plane down on to the stretch of Maine coastline, the crazy, bumpy descent made her confident that her fate was sealed. Every movie or TV show with a plane crash ran on repeat in her head. This was how those scenes looked: overhead compartments popping open, people bracing for impact, excessive bouncing and shaking.

Lucy would never have a chance to live out her actions in Cass’s tarot cards. She would die right here in a fiery ball of twisted metal and burning flesh. Everything in her line of vision blurred as the plane shook and rattled and approached the long stretch of beach and the short stretch of a temporary runway with acceleration, not a decrease of speed.
 

“He trained for this,” her father reminded her. “You’re okay.”

But Lucy was not okay.

The wheels touched down, but only briefly before the plane shot up again, and then jerked back down. Lucy held on to the seat in front of her and braced for impact. An intense whoosh passed through the cabin and Lucy looked out the window to her right—she realized the ocean was right outside, swirling by in a blur.
 

When the plane came to a stop, those sitting in the emergency rows yanked open the doors and deployed the bright yellow slides. With her anxiety climbing, Lucy felt like she wanted to hit something, but she had spent the entire plane ride sitting next to a snoring Galen, and hitting him seemed mean-spirited.

“Okay, Kings,” Maxine called in her take-charge voice. “Let’s all stay together. Big kids help the little kids off the plane.” Big kids help the little kids. The motto of their family—it was always Ethan, Lucy, and Galen assuming responsibility for Malcolm, Monroe, and Harper. Galen let the twins slip ahead of him as they made a beeline for the slide. Lucy looked for Harper, but her mother was already holding tight to the girl’s hand. Ethan was busy with Teddy, packing up his acquired belongings: a toy car, a stuffed hippopotamus, and a collection of books. Blair had packed every toy, blanket, stuffed animal she had procured for him. Of everyone on the plane, Teddy had the most things. Allison lurked behind Ethan, grabbing the extra bags and looking altogether useless.

“You coming with me?” Cass asked and Lucy nodded, relieved to have the companionship. “I’ll wait for you.” Cass waited her turn in the line of people disembarking the plane, and then swung down on to the inflated slide, holding her bag in her lap as she went.

Lucy hesitated at the door and felt the push of the people behind her. She realized too late that she had picked a bad day to wear a dress, and yet she jumped, sliding down until she reached the sandy bottom. Slipping off her shoes, Lucy stood and wiggled her toes. Sand. The sand was cold and wet against her foot, the grains rubbed in between her toes. Tucking her bag into her body, Lucy looked up.

Looming in front of her, to the left of the plane, was an amusement park. An abandoned Ferris wheel sat unmoving, its carriages drifting back and forth in the wind. A steel rollercoaster peeked above a red and white circus tent. The strong gusts of coastal wind whipped through the tent and pieces of it flapped angrily against the sides. Lucy walked forward, drawn to the park by some invisible string, her mouth agape. A giant collection of swings danced and creaked from a carousel. Nothing looked gloomier than the paint-chipped clowns and empty carnival game stands; stuffed animals dangling ownerless for the rest of time. Lucy took another step toward the park, and kept her eyes trained on the motionless rides. In the not too distant past, this was a place of laughter and mirth.

It reminded Lucy of an old friend from elementary school whose family moved away quite suddenly. Maxine took Lucy over to their apartment to check on them and they found the apartment abandoned and trashed. In one of the back bedrooms, a place where Lucy had played with her friend for hours, they found a half-empty toy box. Inside: a half-dressed Barbie doll that had undergone a haircut. Lucy remembered playing Barbies with her friend, but seeing that doll—alone, dirty, left behind—made Lucy sad. It wasn’t right to have to leave without your toys; it wasn’t right to abandon something that had once been so well loved.

The carnival made her sad for the same reasons.
 

Lucy heard Cass whistle. She turned. No more than a hundred yards in front of the plane was a pier. It jutted out into the water, waves lapped against its barnacled posts. She gulped. Had their pilot not stopped the plane exactly on that stretch of runway, they would have run right into the raised platform, splintering the wood and sending the whole jetty crashing into the ocean. Lucy’s eyes were on the pier and the amusement park in her periphery when she followed Cass’s gaze.

It was not the pier or the towering rollercoasters that attracted her attention.

No, Cass had wandered down the beach, away from the disembarking travelers, and she was looking outward into the ocean. As the waves rolled in, the sun passing by overhead, Lucy caught a glimpse of a tower out at sea. It rose and then disappeared. Its top was present for a second, then gone. Occasionally she could see other little mounds, which looked like glass rocks in the distance, but after peering further, she realized the mounds were connected to the middle area. Little dots of white twinkles shone brightly from the tower, lit up like a Christmas tree and acting as a beacon to the weary travelers.

“Is that Kymberlin?” Lucy asked when she reached Cass on the beach. She realized that this must have been how Dorothy felt when she first spied the glimmering beauty of the Emerald City. Huck’s crowning achievement was majestic.

Cass nodded, her eyes wide.

Lucy held her shoes behind her back and stood on her tiptoes to see. Then she walked forward, absorbing the distinguishing details of this city on the sea. It had a mirage quality to it: a dreamlike appearance. It was as if it could have been tangible or a hallucination, all at once.
 

“It doesn’t look real,” Lucy said. “It’s so...futuristic. How could anyone not notice this thing cropping up in their backyard?”

“It’s real,” Cass answered. Then she turned to Lucy, “People believe what you tell them. Conspiracy theorists are shot down as wackos. If the news tells you it’s a scientific station to study wave energy, then you don’t wonder why the military is involved. Why boats that got close were lost at sea...”

“No way,” Lucy shook her head. “I didn’t hear about any of that.”

Cass shrugged. “Of course not.”

“It’s not
that
far away.”

Cass turned and shook her head, her braids drifting across her back. “It’s very far away. The land gives the illusion that it’s closer than it is. But don’t be fooled, Lucy. Huck might want comfort for his handpicked population, but he certainly doesn’t want them capable of leaving the Islands.” Then, without saying anything else, she turned and left Lucy alone on the beach.

From the distance, Lucy could hear the
chop chop chop
of a helicopter approaching. She scanned the sky and noticed several small black dots drifting toward the beach, their trajectory aimed straight at the medium sized plane marooned on the white stretch of sand. People began to gather and point, excited murmurs carried on the wind, but Lucy kept her eyes focused forward on the lights in the distance.

Everyone else from Lucy’s plane had stayed close to the landing site, and she could hear her mother calling for her to come back, but Lucy tuned her out and tried to focus on the sound of the waves. She let the roar of the ocean pour over her as she looked out at the tower of Kymberlin: her new home.

They had been the fourth plane to arrive. A caravan of helicopters transported them from the beach to Kymberlin. And when the helicopters landed them atop the north tower, they traveled down a glass elevator straight into the middle of a welcome party. Lucy was hyper-aware of everything; she wanted to take it all in so she could tell Grant later. The helipad had a singular entrance and exit, and the elevator went from the exposed roof straight down into a common area without stopping. It was visible and public. All of it. Every piece, every corner of Kymberlin was glass and windows and dangling crystal chandeliers.

When Lucy and her family exited the elevator, cheers erupted and several people rushed forward to welcome them home. Music pumped out into the open foyer and men in white suits raced around serving small plates of appetizers. Lucy stumbled backward and clutched her bag in front of her as a man passed by with food. She saw her mother look over to her father with a huge smile on her face, and he beamed at her, puffed up with pride.